“I think it’s the wind. It hits you right in the face. It’s hard to catch your breath,” says Brian Reft of Mt. Washington.

“It’s harder to get a breath, especially if you have to get a deep breath,” Ellen Marcus of Allison Park said. “It almost feels as though you can’t get enough air going into your lungs.”

“The air is very cold, and there’s not a lot of humidity or water in it,” Dr. Deborah Gentile, an asthma specialist at Allegheny General Hospital said. “Particularly for anyone with any respiratory problems, it can actually cause a bronchospasm.”

That’s a clamping down of the airways and it’s rough on the lungs, especially for folks with bronchitis and emphysema.

“Their breathing tubes are sensitive to a variety of factors, it can be respiratory viruses, allergens, irritants,” Dr. Gentile said. “And believe it or not, cold air is one of them.”